arXiv — Machine Learning · · 3 min read

PathBridger: Subgoal Bridges for Offline Goal-Conditioned Reinforcement Learning

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Computer Science > Machine Learning

arXiv:2608.29061 (cs)
[Submitted on 29 Aug 2026]

Title:PathBridger: Subgoal Bridges for Offline Goal-Conditioned Reinforcement Learning

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Abstract:Offline goal-conditioned reinforcement learning (GCRL) aims to learn policies for reaching diverse goals entirely from fixed trajectory data. Long-horizon offline GCRL remains challenging because sparse goal-reaching signals must be propagated over many steps, while execution errors cannot be corrected through additional environment interaction. Existing methods address these challenges by improving long-range value estimation or reducing the effective decision horizon through subgoals, options, and action chunks. In several hierarchical methods, however, a selected subgoal specifies where to go, while the intervening state-space path remains implicit in an endpoint-conditioned low-level policy. To address this interface, we propose PathBridger, a hierarchical offline GCRL method that explicitly connects subgoal selection to short-horizon execution. PathBridger constructs a state-space bridge toward the selected intermediate endpoint and decodes it into a short executable action chunk using an inverse dynamics model. Experiments across the evaluated OGBench tasks demonstrate strong aggregate performance, with particularly large gains on the multi-object Cube manipulation tasks. Code: this https URL
Comments: 14 pages, 2 figures. Code: this https URL
Subjects: Machine Learning (cs.LG); Robotics (cs.RO)
Cite as: arXiv:2608.29061 [cs.LG]
  (or arXiv:2608.29061v1 [cs.LG] for this version)
  https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.29061
arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

Submission history

From: Soohyun Choi [view email]
[v1] Sat, 29 Aug 2026 05:33:01 UTC (455 KB)
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